A masterpiece -- the culmination and distillation of Peter Ackroyd's lifelong passion for the history and topography of London. Vividly anecdotal and brilliantly original.

Perhaps the most important study of the city ever written, London confirms Ackroyd's status as what one critic called, "our age's greatest London imagination." Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London, but this new book is his definitive account of the city. For Ackroyd's London is a living organism, with its own laws of growth and change, so London is The Biography , as the book is subtitled, not a History. Here Ackroyd portrays London from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century, noting magnificence in each age. But this is not a simple chronological record.

He writes chapters on the history of silence, the history of light, the history of childhood, the history of Cockney speech, and the history of drink. He constructs a comprehensive, multilayered image of the place, animated by his concern for the close relationship between the present and the past, and the peculiar 'echoic' quality of London which actively affects the lives and personalities of its citizens.

For over 100 years, thousands of Aboriginal children passed through the Canadian residential school system. Although the system was meant to bring Aboriginal children into the "circle of civilization," the actual results were far different. More commonly, it provided an inferior education in an atmosphere of neglect, disease, and often - abuse.

Using access to previously unreleased government documents, Milloy provides a full picture of the ideological roots of the system, and follows the paper trails of internal memorandams, reports from field inspectors, and letters of complaint. In the early decades, the system grew without planning or restraint. Despite numerous critical commissions and reports, it persisted into the 1970s, when it transformed itself into a social welfare system without improving conditions for its thousands of wards.

A National Crime shows how the residential system was chronically underfunded and mismanaged, and how this affected the health, education, and well-being of entire generations of Aboriginal children.

"Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . A great book, in a great historical tradition." Commentary

The 14th century gives us back two contradictory images: a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and a dark time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world plunged into a chaos of war, fear and the Plague. Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived.

His Letter to Egbert gives his final reflections on the English Church just before his death, and all three texts here are further illuminated by a detailed introduction and explanatory notes.

A masterpiece of the historian's art, Hugh Thomas's The Spanish Civil War remains the best, most engrossing narrative of one of the most emblematic and misunderstood wars of the twentieth century. Revised and updated with significant new material, including new revelations about atrocities perpetrated against civilians by both sides in this epic conflict, this "definitive work on the subject" (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times) has been given a fresh face forty years after its initial publication in 1961. In brilliant, moving detail, Thomas analyzes a devastating conflict in which the hopes, dreams, and dogmas of a century exploded onto the battlefield. Like no other account, The Spanish Civil War dramatically reassembles the events that led a European nation, in a continent on the brink of world war, to divide against itself, bringing into play the machinations of Franco and Hitler, the bloodshed of Guernica, and the deeply inspiring heroics of those who rallied to the side of democracy. Communists, anarchists, monarchists, fascists, socialists, democrats -- the various forces of the Spanish Civil War composed a fabric of the twentieth century itself, and Thomas masterfully weaves the diffuse and fascinating threads of the war together in a manner that has established the book as a genuine classic of modern history.

A shattering chronicle of the life and death of the Cathar movement -- one of Western civilization''s great tragedies.

At the beginning of the 13th century, the Cathars, a group of heretical Christians, thrived across what is now southern France, but was then a patchwork of city states and principalities beholden to neither king nor bishop. The Cathars held revolutionary beliefs that threatened the authority of the Catholic Church as well as the legitimacy of feudal law: they thought the idea of Hell, indeed the entire metaphysic constructed by the Church, to be a sham; they rejected all sacraments, including marriage; they thought private property an absurd notion and that all things worldly were corrupt; they gave women religious status equal to men.

Though they lived peacefully, the Cathars growing influence enraged a Catholic Church that was flexing its muscle after decades of weakness, and its powerful Pope, Innocent III. The Church recruited the forces of France, eager to expand her territory to the south, and systematically attacked the Cathars in crusades between 1209 and 1229. By the time the wars were over, the map of Europe had been rearranged, and the Inquisition -- unleashed.

Full of colourful and passionate personalities, The Perfect Heresy sheds new light on the 13th century and on the timelessness of religious intolerance.

A witty, erudite celebration of fifty great Italian cultural achievements that have significantly influenced Western civilization from the authors of What Are the Seven Wonders of the World?

"Sprezzatura," or the art of effortless mastery, was coined in 1528 by Baldassare Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier. No one has demonstrated effortless mastery throughout history quite like the Italians. From the Roman calendar and the creator of the modern orchestra (Claudio Monteverdi) to the beginnings of ballet and the creator of modern political science (Niccolò Machiavelli), Sprezzatura highlights fifty great Italian cultural achievements in a series of fifty information-packed essays in chronological order.

In The Great Shame, Thomas Keneally--the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Schindler''s List--combines the authority of a brilliant historian and the narrative grace of a great novelist to present a gripping account of the Irish diaspora.

The nineteenth century saw Ireland lose half of its population to famine, emigration, or deportation to penal colonies in Australia--often for infractions as common as stealing food. Among the victims of this tragedy were Thomas Keneally''s own forebearers, and they were his inspiration to tell the story of the Irish who struggled and ultimately triumphed in Australia and North America. Relying on rare primary sources--including personal letters, court transcripts, ship manifests, and military documents--Keneally offers new and important insights into the impact of the Irish in exile. The result is a vivid saga of heroes and villains, from Great Famine protesters to American Civil War generals to great orators and politicians.

Books VI to X cover a dramatic century -from Rome's apparent collapse after defeat by the Gauls in 386 B.C. to its emergence as the premier power in Italy in 293 B.C.

From the Roman Empire to the present day, this is the story of Italy. Until just over a century ago, Italy did not exist as a political unit, yet it was both the heart of the Christian Church and the seedbed for the extraordinary cultural flowering that was the Renaissance. In the middle ages, the merchants of Florence, Genoa, and Venice bridged Asia and Europe with their trading and financial activities, yet Italy remained a region of fiercely independent city-states. In the nineteenth century an upsurge of nationalist fervour was channelled by Garibaldi into a victorious war against Italy''s Habsburg overlords. A political vision was finally realized and the nation of Italy was created. This extensively illustrated survey by twelve leading historians offers a fascinating introduction to the history and culture of Italy.